Chapter 371: Five Miles into the Fog
The North.
Shenyang, the city that housed the main estate of the Moyong Family.
With the fickle summer weather, it was nothing unusual for clouds to gather swiftly over a sky that had been clear only moments before. Yet today those clouds hung especially low and heavy, looking somehow ominous.
“The smoke is still rising…”
“What in the world is going on…?”
Men and women of every age had spilled out into the streets, murmuring among themselves. Their gazes all fixed on the same point: the Moyong Family’s main house, standing at the city’s edge.
“I was supposed to make a delivery there today…”
The merchants were the ones with their feet already in the fire.
“I tried to find out what was happening, but I couldn’t even get close. All I saw were red banners everywhere—signs forbidding approach.”
The fortress-like high walls made it impossible to glimpse anything of the Moyong estate’s interior.
“A bureaucrat who managed to get nearer was driven back by warning shots.”
“They opened fire… on an official?”
“Everything is under lockdown—no one going in, no one coming out.”
“This is bad…”
Anxiety filled every face.
“So the rumors of civil war are true…?”
The Moyong Family was not merely the heart of Shenyang; it was the economic hub linking the cities of the North. If the Moyong Family faltered, the entire northern territory of the Central Plains would tremble with it.
“What about the Moyong branch? Has anyone been to the Shenyang branch?”
The merchant who was asked shook his head, expression grave.
“They’ve sealed off the streets around that place too. Fully armed branch personnel coming and going—whatever’s happening, it isn’t ordinary.”
“Haah…”
The merchant who heard the answer grew even darker.
“The North is already in chaos over the Terror King and the rest… and now even the Moyong Family…”
His eyelids quivered as he stared at the black smoke rising from the Moyong main house.
“They say the Third Young Master of the Sword Clan, together with Mount Hua and Wudang, is joining the Terror King…”
Dry swallows clicked up and down the street.
“…Does that mean, just like the rumors… a second Northern War might really break out?”
At that moment one of the listening merchants quietly slipped away from the group. His departure was so deft that no one noticed him leave.
Damn it…!
He was an intelligence agent of the Terror King’s side, disguised as a merchant of northern tribal origin.
There’s nothing useful at all.
He forced down his agitation and melted into the crowds thronging the streets.
Every channel of information from inside the Moyong main house has gone dead, so I came all the way out to the streets…
Nothing.
From the main thoroughfare into an alley, from the alley into a deeper one, the Terror King’s agent finally reached their hideout.
“(Did you manage to dig up anything useful?)”
The moment he stepped inside, the language of the northern tribes filled the air.
“(…Nothing. Not a scrap.)”
Unlike usual, the hideout—disguised as an abandoned warehouse—was packed with agents just like him.
“(Damn it.)”
Cigarette smoke from the variously disguised agents hung thick enough to sting the eyes.
“(We threw every available operative into the streets and still nothing solid…?)”
From the inner room the branch chief let out a sigh that seemed to sink into the earth itself.
One report claimed the rebels had won. Another claimed the rebels were still holding out. Yet another said Moyong Un-jeong had admitted fault and was transferring power to the elders.
“(Ha!)”
The branch chief flipped through the reports and gave a hollow laugh.
“(There’s even the ridiculous claim that Moyong Un-jeong cleaned up every last rebel in less than half a day.)”
The deputy chief, puffing away, shrugged.
“(What can we do? Because of the civil war we can’t reach any of our usual contacts inside the Moyong main house.)”
“(Tengri above…)”
The branch chief clutched his head, invoking their god.
“(I feel like I’ve gone blind overnight…)”
“(If there’s any consolation, it’s that we’re not the only ones in this mess.)”
The deputy chief spoke as if to comfort him.
“(Reports keep coming in that agents from other factions are swarming the streets as well.)”
“(…Everyone must be climbing the walls with anxiety.)”
It was not only the Terror King’s side that had come down to the marketplace in search of scraps of information. Whether hostile to the Moyong Family or not, every faction was racing about as though their tails were on fire.
“(Still… we can’t leave it like this.)”
The branch chief shook his head.
“(We’ll have to consider trading information with other factions.)”
“(Other factions…?)”
They were still exchanging opinions when a soft, precise knock sounded on the hidden door.
“(…Looks like I’ll be meeting every last intelligence agent in Shenyang before the day is out.)”
The man on watch grumbled as he rose and first opened the small peephole set into the secret door. Standard security procedure.
“…….”
Yet after peering outside he simply stood there, saying nothing.
“(Hmm…?)”
Puzzled by his partner’s strange behavior, the second man on the same shift also stood.
“(What are you—)”
Something cold and black had been thrust through the peephole and was now jammed into his partner’s mouth.
“……!”
It was a gun barrel.
And in the instant he met the pair of golden eyes beyond that muzzle—
Bang!
The bullet tore through the mouth of the man holding the barrel and burst out the back of his skull, taking the second man’s head with it as well.
Thud-thud!
“……!”
One of the agents near the entrance was still being showered with brain matter, blood, and bone fragments when—
“We’re under attack…!”
The boarded-up windows shattered all at once and a storm of gunfire poured into the room.
Bang-bang! Rat-tat-tat!
Teacups exploded. Papers flew into the air. Amid the thick black-powder smoke the bodies of the agents packed into the hideout jerked and fluttered as if dancing.
“……!”
Some dove under tables; others crawled under desks. But no one escaped the hail of bullets unscathed.
And a short while later—
Cease fire.
The interior of the hideout, after the gunfire had swept through, was a wreck. Only intermittent groans remained.
Creeeak—
The secret door opened and a woman in black night-operation gear stepped inside. She was the one who had fired through the peephole first.
“Cough…!”
With calm hands she reloaded the pistol she held and walked toward the sound of the groans.
Step. Step.
“Kh—hakh.”
The branch chief, farthest inside and therefore not killed outright, looked up at her with trembling eyes, blood dripping from his mouth. Between the folds of her hood, eyes the color of gold were visible.
“(…So this was the plan from the beginning?)”
Sharp enough to hold a branch chief’s post, he grasped the situation at once.
“(Seal every scrap of internal information so that all the intelligence networks in Shenyang go scrambling in every direction… then hunt them down?)”
He coughed up another mouthful of blood and smiled bitterly.
“(…They called him the Divine Calculator. The tall tales about that Eldest Young Master were true after all.)”
The woman in night gear drew a map from her bosom and held it out.
“The locations of the remaining branches?”
Her voice was beautiful enough to send a chill down the spine.
“(Heh.)”
The branch chief sneered at her.
“(We’re both professionals. Don’t waste time on pointless efforts.)”
She raised the pistol and pointed to one corner of the map.
“Here?”
“(I don’t know.)”
The muzzle slid smoothly to the next region.
“Here?”
“(I said I don’t know.)”
Even though she knew he would never answer, she kept asking; the branch chief inwardly wore an expression of pure incredulity. From the way the raid had been conducted she was clearly an expert—so what was this nonsense?
A moment later she nodded as though she understood, picked up a brush that had rolled across the floor, and marked several places on the map.
“Here, and here. And here as well.”
“……!”
There was no time even to ask how.
Bang!
The pistol in her hand spat fire; the branch chief’s skull burst and his corpse toppled sideways.
“All clear.”
“No survivors.”
As the other women in night gear reported the results of their search, the woman with the pistol removed her hood.
“This map marks the enemy hideouts. Deliver it personally to the Master of the Hyeonwol Pavilion.”
“Yes! Chief Maid!”
The face revealed beneath the hood belonged to Jeong-a, chief maid of Eldest Young Master Yeon So-hyeon.
“Whoa—!”
Behind her, three girls of almost identical height—the triplet maids—cried out in admiration.
“For a bunch of pirates, they sure used some fine firearms!”
“Their old base in Jiangnan was the most advanced region in gun technology, after all!”
“Heh-heh…. With these guns added to the Wongak-jeong maid corps, we’re invincible now!”
A few months earlier, the Bloody Fleet of the Four Seas Fiendish Killers had attacked the Valley of Sin. The Eldest Young Master had seized their latest weapons, armed the maid corps with them, and trained the women in secret. Unlike the northern China region, the North itself imposed no real restrictions on the use of gunpowder.
“That’s enough chatter.”
Chief Maid Jeong-a exchanged a silent nod with the Hyeonwol Pavilion operatives flooding in to secure intelligence, then spoke.
“Our purpose, by the Eldest Young Master’s command, is to throw the enemy’s eyes and ears into confusion. There is no time to spare.”
Time passed. The sun, buried in heavy clouds, was sinking toward the western horizon when—
“What did you say…?!”
Commotion erupted through the ranks of the Mount Hua Sect’s vanguard, which had just reached the outskirts of Shenyang.
“We forced a hard march after changing our entire route to get this far—and now we’re not even allowed to enter Shenyang, let alone approach the Moyong Family…?!”
The one roaring in fury was a powerfully built middle-aged man: Gam Woo-hyeon, commander of the vanguard and First Disciple of the sect master.
“That old fox Sama Dae-gunsa has finally lost his mind!”
He brandished the note delivered by carrier hawk and spat his rage like fire.
“If not that, then he still thinks of our Mount Hua Sect as mere pawns of the old Wulin Alliance!”
Ordinarily the Mount Hua disciples would have edged away from him. Today, however—
“…….”
“…….”
—they only nodded, faces full of the same discontent.
“Senior Brother.”
A middle-aged woman, Deputy Commander Mae Ok, spoke.
“Isn’t it true that every scrap of information coming out of Shenyang right now is a complete mess?”
Mount Hua maintained its own minimal intelligence network inside Shenyang. Their reports, too, were worthless.
“In chaos like this, advancing with caution, one careful step at a time, is also—”
“What exactly are you suggesting we do?!”
Gam Woo-hyeon bellowed.
“Do you expect clean intelligence from a place in the middle of a civil war?!”
In the midst of ongoing battle, reliable information almost never made it out intact.
“Even so, when the intelligence is this thoroughly scrambled—”
“Commander!”
A scout who had been posted to the rear came racing up, half-fainting from the effort, and shouted.
“The Wudang Sect’s vanguard has been sighted half a shichen away! The distance is closing!”
On the northern plains, spotting something half a shichen distant was no great feat.
“Deputy Commander Mae Ok!”
Gam Woo-hyeon shouted at her.
“Are we just going to let those Wudang bastards snatch the merit from us?!”
“…….”
Mae Ok bit her lip hard beneath the weight of every disciple’s stare. Unlike usual, the disciples were not on her side.
…If I keep insisting on caution now…
If she were right, fine. But if they ended up handing the glory to Wudang—
“The Wudang vanguard is picking up speed!”
“Mae Ok!”
Under the renewed pressure she released a long breath.
“…It seems we have no choice.”
A short while later the Mount Hua vanguard column began to run once more.
Their destination was Shenyang.